


Portents of Ruin

by lostsleeper (orionCipher)



Series: Decoupage Memories [2]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: AU, Ships TBD - Freeform, Weird Dream Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-12 20:39:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5679958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orionCipher/pseuds/lostsleeper





	1. In the Beginning

He was dreaming – the sky too blue, too red, too dusty - no way around it. A burnt scent lingered under rust, chemicals, salt… something more. Familiar enough to seem almost alien. The winds whipped past him, drove up the brown, crisp grass and over the cliff before him. The clouds were wrong too.  
He turned to look behind him, but he couldn’t. Head wouldn’t twist the way he’d like – hit 15 degrees and just… stopped.  
He’d blinked, and the sun was now blocked, just a touch, by a figure. Long hair dragged out in gusts, and he could just barely make out a set of wide shoulders and a sturdy outline. They were facing away from him, but he could swear they were talking to him, whispering in his ear, falling off the planet, being swallowed by the darkness like the rest of the world.

....

It was too bright to be morning. Lucent blue eyes peered suspiciously at the eerily quiet and ridiculously cheap alarm clock on the nightstand.  
He must still be dreaming. Zack may not be a morning person, but there was no way he’d ever drag ass till noon on a workday, and if he were still dreaming, it couldn’t hurt to go back to sleep.  
He rolled over, curled in, and promptly shot out of bed, narrowly missing the door frame on his race to the bathroom. The clock had said 11:49 AM. It also said it was a Wednesday, that the temperature was a balmy 32 C, and that he hadn’t bothered setting the alarm after coming off night guard last night and SWEET HOLY HE WAS GOING TO _DIE_ WHEN ANGEAL GOT HIS HANDS ON HIM, BECAUSE OH FUCK WHERE WAS HIS TOOTHBRUSH?!  
He’d forgotten the dream in a heartbeat, too busy grooming amidst a frenzied shower and mixing up his conditioner and toothpaste and bodywash, but there was NO TIME and if he had minty fresh hair and silky smooth skin and a gaia-awful taste in his mouth that was Fine.  
He was Fine.  
Everything was FINE.

He’d barely slipped on his boots before running through the halls and barreling through the stairwells, taking entire floors worth of steps with every jump. He’d crossed the courtyard and tracked mud and the remnants of ruined flower beds all the way through Shin-Ra’ s lobby, finally taking a moment to catch his breath in the elevator. The ding at floor 51 Set him running again, and it was only after racing into the room, and seeing Lazard's vaguely disgusted face, that he realized this wasn’t the Briefing Room. A slim girl in a sleek suit quickly appraised him and pointed to his chest.

“Aren’t you cold without a shirt?”

The day did not get better.  
Gaia was laughing at him. His afternoon had been ridiculous, his evening humbling, and night had set him out on guard again. His paperwork had piled at an unholy rate in his absence, almost half of it not even addressed to him (probably some interns or pencil pushers pawning off what they could on whomever they could.) Zack watched the night settle around him as he eased through the familiar routes, and began the long wait for third watch to begin.

The weeks flew by and Angeal had all but forgiven him.


	2. Believe Me, Natalie

The sky was just as burnt and bruised as before, the stench just as potent.  
He tried to turn around again. Failed, again.  


The figure was back, but this time shoulders were sagging. He'd never given much thought to deeper meanings of dreams, but this one was starting to warrant suspicion. The figure started to turn, wild hair blocking the details of the face, blurring the voice he knew was there. The head drooped to the side, slowly, almost quizzically. It reached out with its right hand, beckoning him forward just as the world began to tip and ink spilled over them all.  


He'd disregarded it, but Zack could have sworn it called his name.  
…..

The arm was outreached and he'd heard his name clear as day.  
The dream repeated for weeks, dissipating like smoke in the morning.  


There was someone sitting on the cliff, and for the first time Zack stepped forward.  
They flinched, turned to face him, and quickly made to stand. The face was still blurred out in places, but thin lips settled into a smile and without ever once moving, called out his name.

“Who are you?”  
It was all he could think to ask as he drew closer, each step a mile with leagues still between them. The air was still, as with oncoming storms. An arm slid, palm up, between them. He walked closer. Words were spilling out in torrents now, soft and harsh whispers clotting together into an urgent white noise. He ignored the hand in favour of lifting one of his own, brushing hair free from the others face.

“Who are you?”

The wind blew violently against him and the smell of rain enshrouded them. He could see more now – the hair was brass and loam and well-loved cellos, soft where it slid across his face – but whole chunks hissed like static in their absence. The lips parted, thousands of glowing pearls slipping to the ground. He blinked and they were gone. Alone, he watched the rain fall and swallow him whole.

….............

The water swirling at his feet is cold and translucent – it smells like the ocean, but looks so shallow – and when he looks up he can't tell if the water reflects the sky or if it's the other way around, both roiling lethargically and looking like they last well into eternity.  
The staticy whispers are back, louder this time. He turns and turns and there is no one but him, ankle-deep in a miniature sea.

“Who are you?!”

As if to answer, his eyes are covered with slick hands. The voice by his ear is like crashing waves, and the figure steps back, releasing him.  
They're still only patches of themselves but now they're leaking like a sieve. The first drop to hit the water diffuses quickly and turns the world red. He grabs for their hand, ignoring the easy slide of blood between them and the feel of drying blood across his cheeks, and they drop as sand to the parched ground.

It's getting brighter, and somewhere behind him Zack can feel the heat building, but the light catches on something in the sand and he has just enough time to grab it before the world is charred.

….............................

He's been pretty capable at telling himself it's all just crazy dreams, or a side-effect of PTSD or mako. The ring in his hand is really fucking this up for him.  
A thin band of glass-like, colorful slivers, wrapped together with a broad, blue central arc, smooth on the inside and raised in peaks on the outside. When it caught the light, after he'd scrubbed the dried blood off, it glowed in a familiar but impossible way – like Materia. When he slides it on, it fits perfectly on his left ring finger, the ridges sitting just-so that if he hadn't seen it, he could swear it wasn't there.

Halfway through the day, he does forget, and the only time anyone asks after it – a nosy junior turk that just keeps gabbing – the words that slip out his mouth aren't his own.

_“It's a promise.”_


End file.
